Hiding class pointers -- was it a good idea?

[Bill Baxter]

Deewiant wrote:
> I don't see the consistency problem between stack and heap allocation.
> 
> In fact, upon further reflection, what heap allocation has going for it is that
> it's more consistent: you can do "Obj o = new Obj" followed by a "return o", and
> it works, just as you can do "int x = 5" followed by "return x". If stack
> allocation were the default, "return o" would be a problem, because it's a
> pointer to the now-invalid stack.

...unless storing as 'scope'.  But anyway, I'm not sure what you mean: 
if by-value were the default, then 'return o' would return a copy of 'o' 
not a pointer to it.  And even if it did return a pointer to it, it's no 
different than trying to return a pointer to a scope class, or to any 
other function-local data.  So maybe you mean "more safe" rather than 
"more consistent"?

--bb